Bleaching Corals

[scottrotton]

My tank has been running for about 6 months now, my Corals have slow growth rate and are bleaching, im runnign a mixed reef tank, roughly 10 SPS birds nest monti and acropora, to softies plenty of mushrooms and a few LPS like the elegance and torches I cant seem to get my nitrate and phosphates in balance, I believe it must be something to do with low nitrate in my tank. What do you think the problem is or anything wrong with my params?

Lighting 2 x AI 26 HD
Lighting Par = 300 top of tank 100 bottom of tank

Tank Demnsions = 120 CM x 45 x 45
Total System Volume = 300 liters

Alk = 7.8
Mag = 1290
Calc = 450
Temp = 25C
PH 7.8 morning "“ 8 Evening
Nitrate 1ppm
Phosphate 0.027 (hanna test kit)

Red Sea salt
Red Sea Colours ( 1ml each per day)
Red Sea nopox (3ml Per day)
Red Sea Energy a & b (10 ml each per day)
Red Sea foundation

 

[jda]

Params are fine. 1 N and .027 P are not dino and algae limiting. I would not sweat these.

This is pretty common for new tanks. Did you start with dry/dead rock? It just might not be mature enough yet for super stability.

I am not a fan of LEDs for acropora, so you will have to get input from others on if your lights have too much white going... which happens to some.

 

[Cheapreef]

How stable is your alk? I found in th past any swings in alk will cause my monti to fade (not bleach) in color fast.
Also you might want to add about 2X as many Hydra 26's to that size tank or add in 2-4 T5's if you plan to keep SPS happy and growing.

 

[ssgss gogeta]

Bleaching Corals

The light would depend on how your rockwork and coral are setup. It may be enough, it may not be.

The one thing that stood out there for me was "plenty of mushrooms" they have a tendency to harm sps. Sometimes their are fine together and sometimes they are not. A few aspects of placement, flow etc come into play. Do you run carbon? If your coral is getting plenty of light and your alk, temp are stable I would consider the mushrooms doing it


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[murphreef]

Your tank is still new it usually takes 6-12 months for a tank to stabilize enough for sps to be completely happy.

Like others mentioned before did you use LR or Dead Rock? Also LEDs like mentioned by others take a lot of fine tuning. Some can make them work beautifully and others like myself gave up on LEDs and just went back to good ol MH

 

[finrod2]

I gave up on LED for my 360g due to bleaching SPS. No matter how low I starting my hydra 26 and 52 settings the SPS would start fading as soon as I decreased acclimation %. I went with MH and T5, the results over the last 8 weeks have been phenomenal, growth, color all coming back. I wish I would have done it a year ago.